Telecom Ramblings

It’s still unofficial, but with this many leaks it’s quite clear we’re way beyond the rumor stage. Google is doing what I never figured they’d do: taking their formula from demonstration to an actual multi-market footprint. The next city to get the Kansas City Gigabit Express: Austin, Texas. [Read more →]

Spring must be the season for these things, as the past few weeks have seen more than a couple cross the wires.  Today Windstream announced the receipt of a new federal contract from the GSA.  The local services acquisition deal puts their voice and data solutions before government agencies across GSA Region 6, the Heartland region of [Read more →]

For the past several weeks, a drama has played out in the Chinese press surrounding the messaging app WeChat. You see, users are up in arms over the possibility that the government won’t let the company that runs the service keep not charging for it. [Read more →]

An article in the Times of India this morning presented details about an impending deal that would put Reliance Globalcom into the hands of Bahrain’s Batelco. Rumors of such a transaction have been bubbling up since the middle of March, and although Reliance has been trying to turn the division into cash for several years now with no success, this one is starting to look like the real deal. [Read more →]

We have two more job listings this week, one from AireSpring and another from Unite Private Networks. [Read more →]

Time for a Friday look at some of the other news this week, with items from Digital Realty, Interoute, OTEGlobe, and Virtela: [Read more →]

With the MetroPCS shareholder showdown just eight days away, it appears that Deutsche Telekom may be about to blink. It’s been some six months since they made the bid, which would simultaneously boost T-Mobile USA’s spectrum position and distance the German incumbent from its US progeny. [Read more →]

These days we rarely see nine figure fiber IRUs hit the wires, but that’s what happened earlier this week in India. Reliance Industries wants to get into 4G, and to get there they’re tapping Reliance Communications for a whole pile of dark fiber across the country. [Read more →]

It had been a few months since Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) acquired anything, so to correct the oversight they kicked off the second quarter by announcing their intention to buy Ubiquisys. The deal will bring key mobile technology aimed at small cell networks into Cisco’s portfolio.  [Read more →]

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) picked up some federal business today. They’ve been selected by the GSA as a provider for the GRITS II contract. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity deal has an estimated potential value of up to $285M with a four year term plus six optional years. [Read more →]

After rumors yesterday that a Vodafone deal was in the works, Verizon quickly moved to put out the flames. If that sounds familiar it’s because it is. Whether it’s just for the Verizon Wireless stake, the whole shebang, or a three-way, such rumors have been difficult to stop lately. [Read more →]

Time for some quick catch-up in the colo space, with items from Cologix, 6DG, CyrusOne, Digital Realty, and Equinix: [Read more →]

The Vodafone rumor du jour would certainly be a dramatic event, should it come true. FT’s Alphaville blog paraphrases ‘usually reliable people’ as saying that Verizon and AT&T are preparing a joint bid for Vodafone worth something in the neighborhood of $245B.  Of course, ‘usually reliable people’ is a fairly general category which could be interpreted to include my dry cleaner and we are still dangerously close to April Fools day still, but then it the Financial Times here and such a deal isn’t entirely implausible. [Read more →]

The Fiber M&A front has been relatively quiet so far in 2013, but this morning saw a bit of consolidation up in the northeast. Tech Valley Communications has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Vermont-based TelJet Longhaul, LLC. Those assets include both a metro and regional fiber network and a 20,000 square foot data center. [Read more →]

This article was authored by John C. Tanner, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.

Last week, news broke that the world’s largest DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack in the history had taken place, almost crippling the internet. Only it might not have been quite as large as reports made it out to be. And it was something that could have been stopped by a fix that’s been around for over a decade. [Read more →]

Sources suggest there has been a dramatic shift in the race to replace the FCC’s Julius Genachowski and Robert McDowell. Rather than go with the usual technocrat with special interest ties, both sides of political establishment have come to the conclusion that a new direction is necessary to bring some passion and energy to telecom regulation. The Democrats will be nominating filmmaker Michael Moore, while the GOP is going with Rush Limbaugh. [Read more →]

Not that it’s a big surprise, but Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S, news, filings) and its proposed acquirer Softbank are vowing to stop using equipment from Huawei. The deal remains under a review by US regulators, and lawmakers are taking the opportunity for a few photo-ops along the way protecting us from evil. [Read more →]

As we head into an earlier-than-usual Easter weekend, here’s a quick look at some other news this week from the colo sector from Digital Realty, IO, DuPont Fabros, Interxion, and Telehouse America: [Read more →]

Ok, there has to be more to this story but I suppose it’s early yet. Apparently the Egyptian coast guard caught some saboteurs in the act of taking down a submarine cable off the coast of Alexandria. Three divers in an inflatable dinghy with air tanks that look so battered they might have found them on the bottom next to the cable were down there sawing away, apparently. [Read more →]

With its recent M&A moves in mind, the markets are trying to guess Oracle’s next target. And it does seem likely there will be a next target, since integrating Acme Packet and Tekelec doesn’t add up to an endgame just yet. The lucky company annointed by analysts as the one with the biggest bullseye on its back appears to be BroadSoft, and I’ve got to admit it makes a lot of sense. [Read more →]

Time for a quick review of news items from the metro side of things: [Read more →]

News from the data center space in the far east this morning, where the frequency new projects has been particularly heavy over the past few years. [Read more →]

While the gear that lights fiberoptic cables continues to evolve rapidly, the changes to fiberoptic cables themselves have been much more incremental for a long time now. That could be on the cusp of changing, as researchers have apparently taken taken the glass out of the equation for some major bandwidth. [Read more →]